Commentary on life with a southern accent

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Six Years Later -- We Will Not Forget

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

"The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires
burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief,
terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass
murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But
they have failed; our country is strong. A great people has been moved
to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations
of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of
America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of
American resolve."

- President George W. Bush, September 11, 2001 Address to the Nation

This 9/11 memorial post is a compilation of commentary, news
reports, eyewitness accounts and pictures not only from that day, but
from the past five years as the nation has recovered from the most
deadly attack on U.S. soil in the country's history.

COMMENTARY:

Over the past six years, millions of words have been written about
the terrorist attacks of September 11. Below is a sampling from each of
the past five anniversaries. I will be adding links to additional
commentary from today's anniversary throughout the day.

"The people who did this to us are monsters; the people
who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is
that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us,
even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we
hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent.
Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws,
we are a decent people." -- Dave Barry.

Pictures of the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001 are
burned into the memories of most every American. Some pictures, such as
the one of the firemen raising the American flag at Ground Zero, became
symbols of the day. Others, such as the ones that captured those
jumping from the Twin Towers to their deaths, were not widely
published, but the very thought that they existed made an impact. After
images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers and the towers falling
were shown over and over again on September 11 and the days immediately
following it, they later became controversial when some in the media
decided that the American public could not handle the sight of those
images.